In 2008, Ryu En Nam, a North Korean defector, was extradited from Russia and executed. He was tied to the train going back to North Korea. “It was horrible. The train started moving and for as long as he could, Ryu En Nam ran with it,” human rights lawyer Lubov Tataretz said, recalling what a Korean diplomat’s son had told her, a few years after she tried and failed to prevent Ryu En Nam’s extradition. Under a recently signed treaty, the few asylum seekers who manage to escape the hermit kingdom and make it to Russia will be forcibly repatriated, to a country where prison inmates have to burn bodies of those who starve to death and use the remains as fertilizer.

On Monday, the Guardian reports, French police and migrants clashed as authorities continued to demolish sections of the refugee camp in the port town of Calais known as “the Jungle.” Buildings housing about 200 people were dismantled, and some makeshift shelters caught fire.

In a decision by the highest immigration court in the U.S., it was decided that female victims of severe domestic abuse in their home countries will be eligible to seek asylum in America.

It's Snowden day at Sheremetyevo! The NSA leaker will meet with human rights groups in the Moscow airport today at 5:00 p.m. (Moscow time). Snowden claims that the U.S. government is attempting to deny his right to seek asylum and violating the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Ecuador will grant Julian Assange political asylum, the country's Foreign Minister, Ricardo Patino, announced this morning.

A Mexican journalist, Jorge Luis Aguirre has been granted asylum in the U.S. after receiving death threats from drug cartels.

The good news: The British Supreme Court has voted to overturn a discretion test that barred asylum protection for persecuted gay folks. The bad news: Obnoxious stereotypes are still alive and well in Britain. For one judge, at least.